Craig Rothwell, (pictured) managing director of CAD specialist 20-20 Technologies, has hit out at kitchen appliance manufacturers, whom he claims often refuse to pay CAD companies a fee to have their products included in the drawings retailers produce for customers.

This is leading to "a potentially massive problem", he believes, where the manufacturer is not getting exposure to every retailer, and the retailer purchasing CAD software will only get a limited number of manufacturer brands. In turn, this restricts the retailer's ability to create an exact replication of what their customer may be specifying.

"Appliance manufacturers don't want to get on board to have their products replicated in the CAD drawing," Rothwell told kbbreview. "But why would any consumer spend big money on a kitchen when all the retailer can say is, 'trust me, it's going to look something like this'?"

Rothwell pointed to increasing confusion in the industry over who actually owns product data and called for the industry to make it freely available. "Certain CAD companies are saying they own it, that's why it's confusing," he explained. "They say 'we did the work, so it belongs to us', but my feeling is that it doesn't. It belongs to the industry and to the manufacturer who can then freely distribute it. At the moment, it's being held by the individual CAD companies. Every CAD manufacturer has to pick a supplier and then it becomes unique to them."

Rothwell admitted the root cause of the problem was unclear, but said a solution was needed before it became too costly to correct.

"Who knows whether it's the CAD companies being parochial about not sharing their 'actual product drawings' with other CAD companies, or the fault of the manufacturer for not realising that they need to invest to get maximum exposure to all retailers. What we do know is there will be a problem and, if left for much longer, it could get larger in scale and more expensive to fix."

Retailer Richard Marr, director of Custom Craft Kitchens in Cambridge, agreed with Rothwell's assessment, accusing suppliers of not appreciating the scale of the problem.

"Appliance manufacturers don't understand why they need to make product drawings available," he said. "They don't understand the independent kitchen specialist. It's a real problem. We try really hard with our reps, but the guys who make the decisions don't understand. When I started on 20-20, showing a generic oven was fine. But nowadays customers want to see their actual oven, their actual hood or whatever. The visual is part of the contract."

Rothwell said one possible solution 20-20 has been looking at would be to create an 'actual product drawings' database held on a server and hosted by a body like the KBSA or BMA. Manufacturers would pay a fee to have their products created as 'actual product drawings'. These images would only have to be created once and would then be held on this central database. CAD companies would pay a subscription to the database, giving them access to all available brands and providing their retailers with the ultimate choice of specifying any brand available within that database.

The downside, Rothwell admitted, is that this would take one USP away from the CAD companies. However, it gives the retailer the luxury of choosing CAD software for what it can do rather than for its brands.

"We believe that data should be shared," he explained, "so once you've given me an order to make it we can share it, everybody can use. I agree that if you're a product designer, the last thing you want is something you've worked on being released to the market. It's your intellectual property. But surely a white box with some dials on the front is OK?"